


Those Who Are Left

by Anonymous



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Dialogue, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Spoilers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 01:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18129086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The heat of the vision still warms his skin. It feels like the smoke has swept right through him and taken something vital with it.-Exploring Jacob's thoughts during and after the Blue Fire scene.





	Those Who Are Left

Grindelwald speaks and the room listens with rapt attention. Queenie clings to his hand and beams at him, something hopeful and frantic in her eyes. She sees this an an answer, as a way to the future she so desperately wants, and all Jacob can see is a stranger wearing the love of his life's face.

She squeezes his hand, eyes alight as Grindelwald moves around the circle, his voice sweeping across the crowd as of he was speaking specifically into every ear. It's pure magic, and the wonder Jacob carries around inside him chest, that has grown and wanted him since the very first moment Newt Scamander pulled him into this ridiculous world sours at the sight. Grindelwald speaks of no-majs, or people like Jacob, and tries to pretty up his dismissal and dehumanization with misdirection and Queenie- Queenie eats it up. The room leans forward to listen.

Jacob knows men like Grindelwald. Men who can turn a phrase, who can speak honey words, who can bend the most sensible man to meet his needs. Jacob went to war to fight men like him, saw the kind of horrors and blood shed that came from following them. Men like Grindelwald lead those caught in his lure straight to their deaths and thinks nothing of the causalities incurred along the way.

Jacob has seen what men like Grindelwald can do. He has seen what Grindelwald can do. New York bares no scars, and it's people have no memory, but it happened. It happened and Jacob will not forget. Nothing can drag those memories from him. No magic can remove something so vital to who he is, not without destroying him.

Jacob glances around just once, spotting Newt standu by frozen in the crowd, his expression stilled into something like shocked horror. Credence and his friend are there, as is Leta Lestrange and the man that is her brother. Tina is harder to spot, almost blending into the crowd. She sinks deeper, as if the crowd could swallow her up, and she could slip away.

This is no place for decent people like them.

Grindelwald has a theatrical flair about him. A showman, not unlike the entertainers that use to visit the troops being sent to the front lines. He turns to the woman holding the skull. He inhales, and then smoke billows from his mouth. There's shapes in the smoke, shadows and colors.

He clings to Queenie and she to him, and it feels like they're the only thing real as nightmares beyond anything he's ever seen flood the room. Her hand rises to her mouth, tears flooding her eyes.

"Not another war," Jacob breathes. The heat of the vision still warms his skin. It feels like the smoke has swept right through him and taken something vital with it.

The first and last great war, they had all said. It could not, would not, ever happen again. But men do not learn from terrors and travesties. And Jacob knows in the pit of his stomach that such a thing is in the realm of possibility. 

_God, please. No more. No more war._

His mind rings with the thought, just repeating over and over. Even as the Aurors come, and Grindelwald resumes speaking. Even as the girl dies and people start disappearing all around them. And then there is silence, so profound and terrible that he'd take almost anything else instead.

He gets his wish and regrets it as the rush of blue fire fills the room. It burns in Queenies' eyes as she turns to him. He grabs her arms and shakes her until her head bob's on her neck.

 _Snap out of it!_ He thinks and begs, even as other words spill from his mouth. His thoughts are running away from him, pleading with her to look at him, to listen to him. They have to leave, they have to get away from this monster. He let's his fear flood his mind, his desperation and love for her painting every thought the color of bruises. He opens all he is, all he has, and let's it pour out of him and into her, like a radio station broadcasting just for her radio.

She looks at him and she doesn't see him at all. She says his name, says, "he's the answer. He wants what we want." Her eyes are far away, on a future that this man cannot bring them. On a future that this man would bathe in blood and cut from their very bones.

Her voice is dreamy as she says, "walk with me."

Her hand slips from his as she takes a step towards the flames. Towards Grindelwald.

His pleads do not reach her, just as her voice cannot reach him. They come from different worlds, but he has never felt so far apart. 

He loves her. He'd follow her across the world a hundred times over. He'd forgive any trespass. He'd die for her if he had to.

He'd give her almost anything. But he cannot give her this. He cannot walk into the blue flames at her side. He cannot swear allergenic to a monster.

Grindelwald is not the answer.

He says no and breaks her heart in a way he never has before. It's not the same as when he willing walked into the rain. It'a not the same as the first time they met after, when she was nothing but a far away, half forgotten dream. It is not the same as when he told her no, they can't get married. This is heartbreak and the frenzied, fearsome desperation to make it stop.

He says no and he loses her in that moment.

He shouts for her, begs her to come back, to turn around, to take them home. His thoughts are promises- marriage and kids and a future if only she'll turn back. They'll find another way, there has to be another way.

She walks into the flames and she screams and screams until finally she's on the other side. She reaches for him, touches his hand. And she looks back, looks at him.

And he thinks, maybe, that she's second guessing her decision. That maybe she'll rush out of the flames, that she'll clasp his hand and whirl them away from this horrible place. She looks at him-

And then she's gone, ripping his heart right out of him on the way.

Grindelwald turns on those who remain and Jacob barely moves out of the way. He can't think as people continue to die, as the flames whip about. As Grindelwald disappears and the flames rush outwards. Someone grabs him and they're outside, fire rushing between tombs, into the sky, across the ground. Someone grabs him and they're further away, looking down as the fire turns to dragons and rise up, up into the sky.

Terrible, beautiful magic that could consume and burn the world. And yet, nothing as terrible as the explosion from Grindelwald's vision. Nothing as terrible as what no magic men can create.

He's shellshocked as those that remain fight to control the blaze. As flames battle against each other and suffocate each other out into ashes in the air. They leave after images once they're gone, embers blinking out like falling stars before they can reach the ground.

It's here, after it's all over, that Tina and Newt find him. Newt grasps his shoulder and Tina takes his arm. It's here that the other survivors slowly come together and Jacob can see the loss etched into each of their faces. Friends and colleagues and lovers and siblings. They're gaping, bleeding wounds that no amount of magic or medicine can fix.

Causalities of war, Jacob thinks and swallows hard, closing his eyes. There is no need to fear some distant, future war, not with a war right there in front of him. One that had been playing out just out of sight for years. One that Jacob has no foothold in, no way to fight, but stand to lose everything he has left to it.

Jacob breathes and raises his hand to clasp Newt's wrist and curls his arm tighter around Tina's. He opens his eyes and sees pain and determination and fear in both of theirs. He looks around and sees broken, shattered people who are pulling together their pieces and stumbling along on fractured bits.

He sees people preparing to go to war.

There will be people who will tell him he no business doing what he's about to do. People who will sneer at him and belittle him and treat him like a child. There will be people who try to push him out, to take what little he has. There will be enemies on all sides and there will be pain. There will be more pain than he thinks he can bear, but he will do so anyway.

Because before Jacob was a baker, he was a soldier. And there's no a single person in this world or the next that's going to keep him from fighting. Not until Grindelwald is gone. Not until Queenie is back. Not until the world rights itself on its axis and the floor- him and Newt and Tina and Queenie- are together again.

So Jacob takes one more deep, smoke tasting breath, and asks, "where to next?"

Newt looks at the commentary, and at the skyline, at him. He caresses the singed fur of the Niffler where he is cradled against his chest. He thinks for a moment, but Jacob can already tell Newt knows exactly what the next step is.

"Hogwarts. We're going to Hogwarts," Newt murmurs.

With those words, they all step into war.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I just watched COG and Jacob's line [not another war] during the blue fire scene just gets me. I thought it conveyed so much of Jacob's thoughts and feeling in it and I wanted to explore it a little. So, this, lol.
> 
> I've been wanting to do a FB fic, but this wasn't the one I planned lol.


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